6 PHASES OF DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING

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1.    IDEA
-       Someone has an idea for a story
-       Invite the right people to the table to talk about it

2.    DEVELOPMENT
-       Discovering the story and developing a strategy in two phases
-       This phase is typically 3 to 6 weeks

Phase 1: "Come and see"
-       Meeting people and visiting locations
-       Money is spent to develop an idea
The next phase if we choose to move forward

Phase 2: Building out the Business Plan
-       Script
-       Budget
-       Defined desired outcomes for the film
-       Development of a distribution strategy 
After review we adjust the story and budget and evaluate if it’s worth moving forward

3.    PRE-PRODUCTION: 
-       The project is green lit with funding
-       Formalizing advisory boards, legal contracts, etc.
-       Building your core team: Executive Producers, Producer, Director, and volunteer teams
-       Begin scheduling the shoot
-       Begin development of the marketing strategy I.E. website and trailer, recruitment of screening hosts

4.    PRODUCTION:  
-       Shooting the film
-       EP’s, Producers and volunteers working simultaneously towards a strong release of the film 

5.    POST-PRODUCTION:  
-       Editing the movie
-       Producers and EP's are getting ramped up for the release 

6.    DISTRIBUTION: 
-       Implementation of marketing and distribution strategy 

T.C. Johnstone

PRAYERS OF A LIFE WITHOUT LACK

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OPENING PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, 
We are so thankful to you that you have said, 
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

We are thankful for the ease with which you walked upon this earth, the generosity and kindness you showed to people, the devotion with which you cared for those who were out of the way and in trouble, the extent to which you even loved your enemies and laid your life down for them. 

We are so thankful to believe that this is a life for us, a life without lack, a life of sufficiency. 
It’s so clear in you, the sufficiency of the Father and the fullness of life that was poured through you, and we’re so thankful that you have promised that same love, that same life, that same joy, that same power for us. 

Lord, slip up on us today.
Get past our defenses, our worries, our concerns.
Gently open our souls, and speak your Word into them.
We believe you want to do it, and we wait for you to do it now.

In your name, amen.

PSALM 23 PRAYER

The Lord is my Shepherd, I have life without lack.
In his green pastures I’ve eaten my fill so I lie down.

At his still waters my thirst is satisfied.
He heals and reintegrates my broken depths in his eternal life
so I can walk in paths of righteousness on his behalf.

Even though I go through loss, hunger, disease, aging, and death
I will fear no evil because you Jesus are with me.
Your strong rod and protective staff put me at liberty.

Your abundant provision is a feast for me so I’m happy to share with my enemies.
You give me hot showers and warm fluffy towels, joyful experiences and deep relationships,
to make me feel clean, special, and powerful.
My cup runs over so I can be generous without ever running out. 

Surely this world is a perfectly safe place for me to be
Because I dwell and abide with God in the fullness of his life in the Kingdom of the Heavens forever. 

CLOSING PRAYER

Gracious Lord, 
Help us to see and understand – with the eyes of faith and the mind you have given us – your magnificent, glorious, self-sufficient being, and the greatness of your kingdom into which we are invited. 
May we grasp the deep significance of the words, “in Him we live and move and have our being,” and know that in that safest of places – in you – there is simply no lack. 

Open our eyes to the high privilege of being created in your image. 
Convince us that nothing makes you happier than seeing those you redeemed by your grace devoting their days to the good of other people and your creation. 
Win over our timid and doubting hearts with the conviction that we are your greatest treasure in all creation. 

Give us sober yet fearless awareness of Satan’s ploys and deceits.
Strengthen our hearts in the knowledge that we have nothing to fear, for you have defeated him. 
We are so glad to know that greater are you who are in us that he that is in the world. 
May our hearts carry that message as we contemplate the awesome reality of the spiritual battle around us.  

Tender Father, you have taught us so clearly that faith – trust – is essential to life without lack. 
We confess that we while we believe in you, we need to believe more fully, more deeply, more constantly. 
In his life, death, and resurrection Jesus showed us that you are completely and utterly trustworthy, and even in the shadow of death there is nothing to fear, for you are with us.  

Bring us to the place of peace where we no longer feel a need to defend ourselves, or to worry about who’s going to take care of us, or to be recognized, or to get our way, or to make sure things turn out right. 
Lord, free us through the knowledge that because you are with us, working in our lives, we have everything we need.

And now, with the truth of who you are deeply engraved in our hearts, give us the confidence and power to love all who are in our lives just as we are being loved by you – freely, fully, joyfully.
Let your Spirit move in our minds and hearts so we believe ever more fully that because you are our all-sufficient Shepherd, we shall never want. 

We ask all this because we would have it no other way.
Amen.

MORNINGS LIKE THIS

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Sunday. What still sunny days
We have now. And I alone in them.
So brief–our best!

So much is wrong, but not my hills.
I have been thinking of writing
A letter to the President of China.

Do it, do it, do it.
I beseech you, I beseech you,
I beseech you, I beseech you.

Mornings like this: I look
About the earth and the heavens:
There is not enough to believe–

Mornings like this. How heady
The morning air! How sharp
And sweet and clear the morning air!

Authentic winter! The odor of campfires!
Beans eighteen inches long!
A billion change–and I am here!

And here I lie in the quiet room
And read and read and read
So easy–so easy–so easy.

Pools in old woods, full of leaves.
Give me time enough in this place
And I will surely make a beautiful thing. 

Annie Dillard
Mornings Like This

A found poem: all text lifted and rearranged from David Grayson’s The Countryman’s Year, 1936

GIVING OF OURSELVES WITHOUT RESENTMENT

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“When you carry someone’s cross, don’t send him or her the bill!”

This is one of the lessons of Gethsemane. The challenge of being an adult, one who helps carry life for others, is to give ourselves over in love, duty, and service without resentment. Those last words are key: Real love is not simply a matter of giving ourselves over in service and duty (mostly we have to do this anyway, whether we want to or not) it’sa question of giving ourselves over without being resentful…

Only when we stop seeing duty as an unfair burden that we haven’t chosen can we love and serve others without resentment and without making others feel guilty because of what it’s costing us…

If we are sensitive and good-hearted, love will frequently become duty, demanding circumstance, and an invitation to sacrifice ourselves for someone or something else. Always there will be someone or something making demands on our freedom and opportunity: children who need us, an aging parent who has only us, family obligations, a spouse with an illness, a crisis at our workplace, a tsunami in Asia, a war we don’t want, a church that needs volunteers, and obligations of every kind that come from being sensitive to the demands of God, family, church, country, morality, and the poor.

The world is not divided up between those who are burdened by duty and those who are free of it.

Anyone who is sensitive and good is burdened by duty. The world is divided up rather between those who are burdened with duty and are resentful about it and those who are burdened with duty and are not resentful about it.

That’s the greatest struggle we have in love. We’re good people mostly, but, like the Older brother of the prodigal son, all too often we nurse resentment, even as we do all the right things. That leaves us outside the house of love, hearing the music, but unable to dance, bitter about life’s unfairness. We need, at some point, to say: “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

If we say that and mean them, we will taste for the first time ever, real freedom.

Ronald Rolhesier
The Passion and the Cross

FOR THE INTERIM TIME

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When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely ion-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might become free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transformed here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

John O’Donohue
To Bless The Space Between Us

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND - JOHN DONNE

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No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

John Donne
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND - MERTON

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Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind. Every Christian is a part of my own body, because we are members of Christ. What I do is also done for them and with them and by them. What they do is done in me and by me and for me.

Nothing at all makes sense, unless we admit, with John Donne, that: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Thomas Merton
No Man Is An Island